New climate war looms after Copenhagen

The stage is set for a new war over climate change in Australia after the Copenhagen
summit yielded a controversial result and ended in chaos.
In the final hours of the summit, world leaders put forward a deal aimed at limiting
global warming to two degrees Celsius.

But it's not clear if the five-page deal can achieve that goal because it contains
no targets to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change.
Also the deal is not binding.
Some leaders - and plenty of conservationists - have slammed it as too weak.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd threw his support behind the deal as "a
significant global agreement on climate change action", but said much more remained
to be done.
"Some will be disappointed by the amount of progress, the alternative was frankly
catastrophic collapse," he told reporters at the troubled summit.
Mr Rudd vowed to press ahead on his emissions trading scheme (ETS), which is the
government's main way of reducing emissions.
But the weak Copenhagen result - and the uncertainty surrounding it - is a blow to
the government's plans on climate change.
Nations are supposed to offer a greenhouse gas target under the Copenhagen deal in a
month's time. Australia has promised a five to 25 per cent cut by 2020; Mr Rudd
would not be drawn on what the final number could be.
The prime minister may have embraced the Copenhagen deal but Opposition Leader Tony
Abbott signalled he would use the hollow result to hammer the government on its
climate change policy.
"Copenhagen, it seems, has been a very Kevin Rudd kind of agreement," Mr Abbott told
reporters in Sydney on Saturday.
"There's been a lot of words but not many deeds come out of it."
Mr Rudd should now think again on the ETS, Mr Abbott said.
"I hope that he'll now entirely reconsider his climate change policy."
Mr Abbott led the Liberals in voting down the ETS in the Senate, and wants to do so
next year, when the government tries again.
The Copenhagen result showed Mr Rudd was wrong to try to rush his climate change
policy through parliament, he said.
Conservationists called on Mr Rudd to reject the Copenhagen deal.
Australian Greens leader Bob Brown said the Copenhagen summit showed how dangerous
climate change was, and Australia should respond by doing more to reduce emissions,
not less.
"From Copenhagen, it is loud and clear that the nations most threatened by climate
change, including Pacific island countries and other developing nations, will not
accept this agreement," Senator Brown said on Saturday.
Get Up's national director Simon Sheikh said rich countries like Australia had to
take strong action on climate change at home to get the Copenhagen process back on
track.
Australian Conservation Foundation executive director Don Henry said he was
disappointed with the deal, saying it fell well short of a treaty that would avoid
dangerous climate change.
"This is a wing and a prayer deal," he said.
"While it does commit to keep warming below two degrees, it leaves all the hard
decisions on how to get there to the fate of ongoing negotiations next year."
The ACTU said the Copenhagen pact would not protect the world from catastrophic
climate change.
"(The deal) won't meet the needs of trying to protect continents like ours, or
indeed the vulnerability of our Pacific neighbours," ACTU president Sharan Burrow
told Sky News.
While CEO of the independent research group the Climate Institute, John Connor,
said: "It's been a very frustrating summit, it's been a combination of calamities
that have led us to a fairly flimsy agreement".
Conservation group WWF said the pact "fails to guarantee a safer future" and
international aid organisation Oxfam called it "a triumph of spin over substance".